SASTRA Deemed University’s engagement with Sanskrit is not merely a language programme. It is an academic attempt to reconnect Bharatiya higher education with a body of knowledge that shaped law, ethics, governance, philosophy, literature and social life for centuries. Through the Department of Oriental Studies and Research, SASTRA has offered MA Sanskrit and related programmes while also taking Sanskrit learning beyond traditional boundaries by connecting it with law, Bharatiya Knowledge Systems, jurisprudence and public reasoning.
The Department of Oriental Studies and Research was established in 2010. It first offered elective programmes for BTech students and diploma programmes, and later introduced MA Sanskrit and MA Divyaprabandham through distance mode. According to SASTRA’s own department profile, it has also offered or facilitated learning in areas such as Vedic Mathematics, Vedic studies, Manuscriptology, Advaita Vedanta, Ayurveda, Epigraphy, Yoga, Jyotirvigyan and Science and Technology in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit course must therefore be seen as part of a broader intellectual ecosystem rather than as a narrow literary degree.
For law students, the importance of such a course is obvious. Bharatiya legal education is usually dominated by English common law, colonial statutes and Western jurisprudential thinkers. That training is necessary, but it is incomplete if students remain unfamiliar with indigenous legal and ethical traditions. Sanskrit legal texts, including Dharmashastras, Smritis, commentaries and allied works, discuss duties, dispute resolution, evidence, governance, punishment, family relations, inheritance and the moral obligations of rulers. Studying them does not mean replacing the Constitution with ancient texts. It means understanding the historical sources through which Bharatiya society once thought about justice, obligation and governance.
The course is particularly useful because many modern legal subjects still carry the imprint of Sanskritic legal literature. Hindu law relating to marriage, adoption, succession, maintenance, joint family property and religious endowments cannot be properly understood only through bare Acts. Their evolution involves an interaction between Sanskrit texts, custom, colonial interpretation and post-Constitutional reform. A student trained in Sanskrit gains access to primary sources and is better placed to understand how ideas travelled from shastra to statute and from commentary to courtroom.
The relevance of this approach was recently echoed by Justice GR Swaminathan of the Madras High Court. In Malarvizhi at Kottaithai v. Secretary to Government of India, he observed that if Latin maxims can be quoted and judgements can rest on them, courts need not shy away from citing Bharat’s own heritage and sources in Sanskrit, Tamil or any Bharatiya language. That observation captures the larger point behind Sanskrit-and-law education: Bharatiya legal reasoning need not remain intellectually dependent only on borrowed categories.
SASTRA’s Sanskrit course is therefore not a nostalgic return to the past. It is a serious academic bridge between language, law and civilisation. When taught critically and constitutionally, Sanskrit can help future lawyers understand that law in Bharat has always been more than rules
Opportunities after completing Sanskrit with this orientation are wider than commonly assumed. Students can move into teaching, research, translation of legal and philosophical texts, manuscript studies, Indology, personal law research, temple and endowment law, heritage law, policy work, comparative jurisprudence and litigation involving religious institutions, customs and Hindu law. It can also strengthen preparation for higher studies in legal history, constitutional theory, Bharatiya Knowledge Systems and philosophy of law.
SASTRA’s Sanskrit course is therefore not a nostalgic return to the past. It is a serious academic bridge between language, law and civilisation. When taught critically and constitutionally, Sanskrit can help future lawyers understand that law in Bharat has always been more than rules. It has also been about Dharma, responsibility, social order and justice.
